Текст книги "Fear the Dark"

Автор книги: Kay Hooper

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Текущая страница: 4 (всего у книги 15 страниц)

FOUR

Jonah got word that the feds had landed on a semiprivate airstrip about thirty miles from town, and not half an hour later, a black SUV pulled into a parking slot in front of the police station, which was just off Main Street.

He stepped out onto the sidewalk to meet them, and to say he was curious would have grossly understated the matter. Four people were getting out of the vehicle, two men and two women, all casually dressed but all also wearing guns on their hips.

The driver was a tall, well-built blond man with unusually intense—and just plain unusual—green eyes. He moved quickly, with the springy step of a man in excellent shape and with energy to spare. And he was the first to reach Jonah.

“Chief Riggs? I’m Lucas Jordan. Luke.”

“Jonah.”

They shook hands, and then a very fair-skinned woman of medium height with a slight build, short black hair, eyes the closest to black Jonah had ever seen, and a sulky mouth that turned her almost beautiful when she smiled joined them on the sidewalk.

“My partner and wife,” Luke said. “Samantha.”

“You always introduce me as your partner first,” Samantha said, observation rather than complaint.

“We were partners first,” he said simply.

“Ah.” She nodded, then extended her hand to Jonah. “Sam,” she said.

Jonah shook hands and was just thinking how these two were unlike any federal agents he’d met before when the other two joined them on the sidewalk, equally . . . unusual.

The man Luke introduced as Dante Swann was slightly above medium height, with dark brown hair and very pale brown eyes that were almost gold—and seemed almost to glow, which was more than a little disconcerting.

“Dante?” Jonah managed.

“My mother was a classical scholar and loved his poetry. Go figure.” He shrugged. “I tried to just be Dan for a while, but—”

“You aren’t a Dan,” Sam said absently as she stood looking around what she could see of the town. There hadn’t been very many pedestrians on Main Street and there were none at all on this side street.

“Apparently not,” Dante agreed, taking a step to the side to introduce his partner.

Robbie Hodge was tall, very blond, and very beautiful. She could have made a fortune as a model. Her merely polite smile made Jonah wonder if his toes were actually curling inside his boots.

Surely not.

Putting various thoughts aside to chew on later, he told the team, “A town this size doesn’t need a very large police department, and since I’ve called in all the auxiliary personnel I have, it’s more than a little crowded in there. If it’s okay with all of you, I’ve commandeered the space next door, right over there, for the duration. Used to be a real estate office, but it’s been vacant for a couple months. I’ve got a big round table, evidence boards, Wi-Fi, and landlines already set up, along with two new computers. There’s a kitchenette in the back as well as a restroom and a lounge. And I’ve got workmen coming in a bit to hang blinds over that big window in front. I figure we don’t need passersby looking in. Because they would.”

“Panic setting in?” Sam said, more a statement than question.

“That started more than two weeks ago, when the judge disappeared. It’s been growing worse and worse. The only happy people in town—though they do try hard to hide it—are the owners of our one electronics store.”

“A run on security systems?”

“Yeah. On complete systems and on various components to enhance and strengthen existing security systems. And locksmiths are installing new door locks at a pace I’ve never seen before. I don’t think there’s a house or condo in town that doesn’t have an extra dead bolt on every exterior door.” Jonah knew he looked tired and grim; he just hoped he didn’t look as grateful as he felt at the arrival of these agents. He was not too proud to yell for help, especially when he didn’t have a clue what was going on in his town, but no man wanted to look like he felt totally helpless, after all.

Luke, clearly the lead agent, exchanged looks with the others, then said, “It’ll be dark in a few hours. All the sites of the disappearances were within a mile radius of downtown, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay. Well, we brought some equipment with us, but we can unload that and get set up later. I assume you’ve stepped up patrols in Serenity?”

“Doubled during the day; after dark they’re doubled again, and I have officers on foot, in teams, covering as much as possible of the downtown area. The town council told me to forget the budget and get whatever and whoever I need, but there just aren’t many trained auxiliary deputies, and I don’t like using jumpy volunteers. So I’ve done what I could. Stretching resources as far as they’ll stretch.”

“It’s all you can do until we find some kind of pattern in all this,” Luke said.

Jonah nodded and said, “Your hotel is just a couple of blocks away. And they’ll hold the rooms till whenever you’re ready to check in.”

It was Luke’s turn to nod. “Good enough. Normally, we’d split up and take different sites, but in this case, I think we should all probably see the site of each disappearance at the same time. And in order.”

“That could be important?”

“At this stage, there’s no telling what may or may not be important,” Luke said, matter-of-fact. “Sometimes we start with the most recent case and work backward, mostly because the freshest crime scene is the most likely to hold some important information or detail. But in this case . . . we can’t really call them crime scenes. According to your reports, nothing was disturbed at any of the scenes, no blood, nothing suspicious. Just missing people. Might as well start with the first scene and work up to Vanessa Tyler’s disappearance last night.”

“Her parents are basket cases,” Jonah said. “My second’s been with them all day, as well as their pastor, with various relatives and friends coming and going. I had to follow the missing-child protocols and put out the Amber Alert for surrounding areas, and I have people manning the tip line.”

Robbie tilted her head slightly as she looked at him. “But you don’t believe either will help find Vanessa.”

“Nessa,” he said in a rather automatic tone. “They call her Nessa. And, no, I don’t expect either to help. If this was a child abduction, just simply that . . . But it isn’t. It’s the sixth disappearance in less than a month, and even though they were all different, they all have . . . things . . . in common. Whatever happened to Nessa, it’s happened to five other people. I don’t want us to focus on just the disappearance of a child, as difficult as that may be. They’re all gone. They all need to be found.”

Luke nodded. “Understood. And agreed. When did you put out the Amber Alert on Nessa?”

“I waited as long as I could,” Jonah said frankly. “It’s a second marriage for Caroline; Matt is Nessa’s stepfather—though he adopted her legally. Her biological father, Curtis Hutchins, hasn’t been part of her life since she was a toddler. He was abusive; Caroline left him with the baby and came here, where she had family. Filed for divorce, uncontested, and got full custody. She and Matt were married a bit over a year later.”

“Hutchins was a suspect?”

“To Caroline he was. Probably still is. She’s convinced even after nearly nine years that he got in somehow and abducted Nessa.”

Luke said, “You’re sure he didn’t. Because her disappearance matches these others in certain . . . details?”

“That. And the fact that shortly after noon today we tracked down Curtis Hutchins. He’s doing life in a Nebraska prison. Aggravated murder, nothing to do with a child.”

“I’d call that an alibi,” Dante murmured.

“Yeah. Once I more or less persuaded Caroline he couldn’t possibly have taken Nessa, of course she and Matt both wanted the Amber Alert. But I kept it low-key.”

“To delay the media descending on us,” Sam said.

Jonah nodded. “It gives us a little breathing room. But if I’m wrong, if Nessa’s disappearance isn’t connected to the others and somebody did simply abduct that little girl . . . I know the odds on stranger abductions of children. Delaying the Amber Alert could have signed her death warrant.”

–

SINCE IT WAS quicker to drive than walk to the spot where Amy Grimes and Simon Church had vanished, Jonah led the way in his Jeep, with three of the feds following in their SUV.

Lucas Jordan rode with the chief.

Almost as soon as they pulled out onto Main Street, Luke said, “You seem very sure Nessa’s abduction wasn’t someone local.”

It wasn’t exactly a question, but Jonah answered anyway.

“No registered sex offenders in Serenity. I know those monsters can hide in plain sight and often do, but I also know my town. I grew up here. Look, we went through the paces. We questioned neighbors, friends of the family, and Nessa’s friends, asked all the right questions of all the right people. I believe a stranger who watched Nessa long enough to be able to get into that house, take Nessa, and get out without leaving so much as a fucking hair behind, even assuming that was possible, would have been noticed.

“That leaves a stranger abduction—and I have the same reservations for that, for the same reasons plus one more. Because her disappearance was too similar to five other disappearances this month for me to be able to ignore that.”

“How do the parents feel now that the biological father has been eliminated from suspicion?” Luke asked, looking around as they drove.

“The whole town knows about the disappearances; even though I tried to keep details quiet, once others were nearby—girlfriends, husbands, parents—most of those details got out quickly. The Tylers believe Nessa’s abduction is connected. They want answers, naturally. And the sooner the better. They’ve also scared themselves more than necessary by going onto the Internet and reading stats on abductions, especially child abductions. Why do people do that?”

“They think they want to be informed, to understand.” Luke shrugged. “Though it usually just scares them more, as you said.”

“I get it. I just don’t like it. People still believe every word they read on the Internet is true, the way they used to be able to trust newspapers. It’s hard as hell to convince them to read critically and check sources. It also wastes my time,” he added.

Calmly, Luke asked, “Have you managed to keep the real oddities of the disappearances under wraps?”

“The oddities of people disappearing into thin air, no,” Jonah said after a moment. “Conspiracy theories are popping up like weeds.”

“And the rest?” Luke smiled faintly when Jonah shot him a quick look. “You asked for the SCU. For us, specifically. We’re all assuming there are details you didn’t put in your reports or tell Bishop. Details you’ve been keeping to yourself. Details that make you certain these disappearances are connected.”

“My second knows,” Jonah said finally. “Sarah Waters, lead detective. She discovered the kids’ car abandoned at the first site, where we’re going now, and was the first to reach the stream where the judge disappeared. She knows all the . . . oddities.”

“And you don’t want to tell us what those are.”

Jonah sent him another quick look. “It isn’t a test or any of that bullshit. It’s just . . . I don’t want any of you influenced by our knowledge or perceptions. People disappearing into thin air is bad enough; I don’t want my imagination running wild. At least not any worse than it already has.”

“I don’t disagree,” Luke said. “About not telling us, I mean. History is filled with disappearances, with people walking away—and apparently vanishing without a trace. But six people in one small town in less than a month is definitely outside the norm.”

“It’s certainly outside the norm for Serenity. We don’t have a disappearance on record until this month. Not a single one, not even runaways.” Jonah hesitated for a moment, and then said, “The spot where we found Simon Church’s car is just up ahead. Before we get started, I should probably confess that I have a pretty good idea of what’s so special about the Special Crimes Unit.”

Mildly, Luke said, “We more or less assumed.”

“Because I called Agent Bishop directly?”

“That—and your visit to Quantico last year. The SCU started out as being something of a guilty secret the Bureau wanted kept at all costs, but the years and the successful cases have made us more respectable, even a solid plus for the FBI. We still tend to keep our abilities quiet in public, but at Quantico and even among most law enforcement organizations we’ve worked with in recent years, we’ve been more or less open about them. Not to the extent of putting too many details in official reports, you understand, or giving interviews to the media.”

Jonah nodded. “I asked around, and that’s what I heard. Your unit has investigated all over the southeast, but especially in the Blue Ridge mountains. You’ve earned a lot of respect. Cops I know are too hardnosed to believe in the supernatural talk about your abilities like they’re just useful skills.”

“They are,” Luke said. “And that is the point. We have abilities that are completely natural to us. And when we can, we use them as investigative tools. Sometimes they help; sometimes they just make a situation more difficult.”

“I have questions,” Jonah admitted. “But I expect I’ll have plenty of chances to ask them.”

“Probably. We aren’t shy, so don’t hesitate. But it might be easier to absorb if you get the information in smaller-to-digest pieces rather than all at once.”

“Noted.”

Jonah pulled his Jeep onto the wide shoulder of the road and stopped it. He and Luke got out, and Jonah waited until the black SUV pulled in behind him and the other three feds got out before he said, “Simon Church’s car was parked on the shoulder about twenty yards straight ahead. I’ve still got the car in the police garage, so you can see that later. I should warn you that just after we found the car and moved it into the garage, we had a hell of a storm with inches of rain. Whatever footprints or other signs there might have been were certainly washed away.”

Sam shoved her hands into the pockets of her jacket and frowned at him. “There were photos in the file, when the car was still here. Presumably taken before the rain. No sign of any footprints, and no mention of them.”

“True,” Jonah said. And that was all he said. He didn’t exactly look stubborn, but it was clear he had nothing else to say for the moment.

To his people, Luke said, “Let’s just walk the area, okay? Keep an open mind, see if we notice anything helpful.”

Jonah waited at the Jeep, leaning back against the front, not showing much expression except weariness.

As soon as they were a few feet away, Sam said, “We being tested?” She was still more than a bit touchy about that sort of thing, especially given her background as a carnival “seer.”*

“No,” her husband and partner replied. “He’s not asking us to jump through hoops, Sam. He hasn’t offered details, but it’s clear Bishop was right about there being things Jonah didn’t put in his reports. There’s something odd about every one of these scenes, something connecting them. Whatever it is, he couldn’t explain it, and he wants to know if we find the same thing.”

“Without prejudice.”

Luke nodded. “Without prejudice. Are you sensing anything yet?” Samantha was a touch clairvoyant, which meant that she generally only had to shield when she was touching something connected to a crime or other violent event. She had, however, been working with other SCU clairvoyants as well as Luke in teaching herself to sense more intangible things—such as the mood of a small town.

“I feel that the whole damned town’s on edge, but it’s a general sort of uneasiness and bafflement. Plus a lot of fear. But faint. What about you? Sensing anything from the missing?”

“You know my shields are up.”

She did. “Yeah, but you’ve gotten better at picking up on fear or pain even with them up.”

“I didn’t want to try until we got to the scenes.”

“Well,” Sam said, “here we—” She stopped so abruptly that Lucas stopped as well, half turning to look at her.

“Sam?”

After a long moment, she said in a distant-sounding voice, “What?”

Luke glanced at the other two agents, who had stopped just behind them. Both looked curious—and guarded. Typical for new agents. He looked back at his wife.

“What are you sensing, Sam?”

She looked up at him, blinked, and then her eyes closed and she went completely limp, only Luke’s quick catch keeping her from hitting the ground.

–

“WELL, I KNEW you all had some kind of abilities, psychic abilities, but I didn’t expect them to knock any of you out.”

“They don’t, as a rule—though we do have a couple of agents who suffer from blackouts. But Sam can be exceptionally powerful, and unlike most clairvoyants or seers, if what she senses is unusually strong, sometimes she . . . goes somewhere else.”

“Somewhere else? Like where?”

“A galaxy far, far away,” Samantha murmured as she opened her eyes, blinking several times with a frown. She was in an unfamiliar vehicle—she assumed Jonah’s Jeep, since it had been closer—mostly sitting up in the backseat.

The door was open and Luke was standing there beside her. She looked at his hand holding both of hers in her lap, then turned her head enough so she could see his face. He didn’t look quite as grim as he might have, which told Sam she must not have been out long, and he wasn’t showing any external sign of strain.

“A galaxy far, far away?” he said to her, dryly.

“When I was coming out of it, I could hear you and Jonah talking,” she said. “And I couldn’t resist.”

“So where were you?” Jonah asked in the tone of a man who wanted answers. “The future, or now?”

“It wasn’t a vision. Nothing from the future.”

“Then the here and now. What was it?”

“I have a question first.” Samantha looked at her fellow agents one by one. “Anybody else feel anything unusual up there?”

Rather surprising everyone, including herself, Robbie immediately said, “Some kind of energy. I could feel the hair on the back of my neck stirring. And really faint, there was sort of an uncomfortable crawly sensation in my skin.”

“Any idea what kind of energy?” Luke asked her.

Robbie shook her head. “I haven’t really learned to differentiate. “But . . .” She drew a quick breath. “For just a few seconds, I could hear whispers.”

“Saying what?” Sam asked.

“I don’t know. I was caught off guard. It happened too fast, and they were too faint.”

“Sam?” Luke was watching her steadily. “What did you sense?”

“Something dark,” she replied slowly. “Something really, really dark. And really, really hungry.”

FIVE

Jonah didn’t quite understand when Luke told him that they would need to wait until the following day to again approach the site where Simon Church’s abandoned car had been found.

“Sam might get something from the car, though,” he added. “After she’s rested a bit.”

“I don’t need to rest,” she protested, getting herself out of the Jeep under her own steam and rather relieved when her legs remained steady. “And even if trying again here is useless for the time being, we still have four other sites where people disappeared. One of us could pick up something at any of them. The judge was next, right?”

“Right,” Jonah said.

Telling herself she was only reading the frustration on his face, Robbie said, “It’s like static electricity.”

“What?”

“When psychics pick up on an energy signature. If it’s a place, then tapping into that energy once is like—walking across carpet in your socks and touching something metal. You get shocked the first time. But then the static has to build back up for the same thing to shock you again.”

“Okay,” he said slowly. “I get that. I think.”

“We’re happy to answer questions as we go,” Luke told him. “But when we get to the areas where people are likely to be all around the site of a disappearance, we might want to be discreet.”

“We definitely want to be discreet,” Jonah said. “Sarah is the only one of my people who knows about your unit; nobody else at the station could even access the law enforcement FBI database, because it’s password-protected. And I’ve told nobody in town. As far as they’re concerned, you’re FBI agents, period.”

“Probably for the best,” Robbie said. “Prevents those what-kind-of-freak-show-have-I-wandered-into glassy-eyed stares.”

Jonah looked at her but didn’t comment.

Before the silence could become obvious, Luke said, “Sam, why don’t you ride with us to the second site.” It wasn’t really a question. Or a suggestion.

“I told you I’m fine.”

“Still.”

“I didn’t get a nosebleed. And I’m not tired. Stop fussing.”

“Since when was that an option? Come on, let’s go. We’ll be losing daylight soon.”

Samantha sighed but climbed back into the Jeep’s backseat while Luke went around to the front passenger seat and Dante and Robbie returned to the black SUV. In just a couple of minutes, they were turned around and headed back toward town.

“Who’s the lady in the cast?” Samantha asked.

Without looking as they passed the house, Jonah said, “Mildred Bates. If it weren’t for that cast, she’d have joined us back there.”

“Town busybody?” Sam guessed.

“Yeah, pretty much. She’s not malicious, but she does like to know what’s going on. Sounds awful to say, and no pun intended, but it’s a break for us she’s laid up with that cast.” He paused, then changed the subject. “What was that about nosebleeds?”

“I get them sometimes,” Sam answered readily. “If I push too hard. Reach too far.”

Luke said, “Most of us pay some kind of price for our abilities, Jonah. They always come with strings. Pounding headaches and nosebleeds are fairly common. Especially—”

Jonah glanced over at him as the fed broke off. “Especially?”

Sam leaned forward, an elbow resting just below the headrest of Luke’s seat, and said, “Especially for those of us not born with our abilities,” she said.

“Sam, you don’t have to,” Luke said without turning his head.

“Oh, I’m not going to offer details. No offense, Jonah, but I don’t know you that well.”

“Okay,” he said, obviously puzzled. “No offense taken.”

“It’s just that those of us not born with psychic abilities, even latent ones, usually have them triggered at some point in our lives. Almost always because of trauma. Emotional, psychological, physical. Sometimes all three. The more traumatic the trigger, the stronger the abilities tend to be.” She paused, adding, “As Luke told you, I have strong abilities.”

Jonah heeded the warning and didn’t question her about that. All he said was, “Are any of the four of you born psychics?”

“I am,” Luke said. “Though I didn’t know about it in the earliest years of my life.”

“Sometimes,” Samantha murmured, “we’re latent as children, born with . . . possibilities. The abilities are there, often full-blown, but we don’t know about them unless and until we experience some kind of trigger.”

Jonah glanced at Lucas but didn’t ask. “Okay. Anybody else?”

“Robbie is. And she was aware of being different pretty much as soon as she could understand the concept.”

“That must have been . . . difficult,” Jonah ventured.

“Most of us don’t exactly look back on rosy childhoods,” Samantha said matter-of-factly. “One way or another, these abilities can and usually do put us through hell.”

Lucas exchanged a look with his wife, then said to Jonah, “Both Robbie and I are able to tap into very specific energy signatures. Unlike Sam and Dante, who have more diverse abilities, we tend to focus very narrowly in order to use our abilities effectively.

“Robbie’s a telepath, able to read about half the people she encounters, at least when she does her version of dropping her shields. That’s a high average; most telepaths are lucky if they can read a quarter or less of those around them.”

“And you?” Jonah asked after a moment.

Luke said, “What I am doesn’t really have a name. It’s partly telepathic and partly empathic. What I do is home in on the specific electromagnetic energy signature of fear.”

“And his specialty,” Sam said, “is finding lost people.”

“People who are afraid,” her partner and husband said. “People who are in pain. Even before I joined the FBI and the SCU, I was using my abilities to find lost people, though in those days I barely had any control at all. I’m better now, thanks to Sam and the SCU.” He paused, but instead of elaborating on that, he added steadily, “But I can’t find people who don’t want to be found. And I can’t find the dead, at least not by using my psychic abilities.”

Jonah asked slowly, “Do you feel the difference? I mean, would you know if the missing person just didn’t want to be found—or was dead?”

“Sometimes.”

“Then—”

But Luke was shaking his head. “No, I haven’t picked up anything here, not so far.”

“What does that mean?”

“Maybe nothing. We haven’t been to all the sites yet. I haven’t been here long enough to get a sense of the place, and I usually need to do that. And . . . I’ve never been able to read anything, feel anything, from people who are drugged or otherwise unconscious.”

“Unless they’re having nightmares,” Sam reminded him quietly.

“Yeah. I do pick up on nightmares sometimes. But like any other psychic, I have abilities that are limited. People often mask or suppress their fear, especially men. I’m less likely to tap into those people. Like all the other psychics in the unit, my abilities also limit themselves, and no matter how much I practice, how hard I try, how hard I push, I can’t get past those boundaries. There are some people I just can’t read, no matter how much pain they’re in or how afraid they are.”

“That must be tough,” Jonah said finally.

“Yeah,” Luke said. “It is.”

–

WHEN THEY REACHED the site where the judge disappeared, Sam hesitated, then said, “I think I’ll wait here by the Jeep. I want to see if any of you sense something. I think I distracted everybody at the first site.”

Jonah was reasonably sure she had—and before any of them had reached what he and Sarah believed was the perimeter of . . . whatever it was. He had also noticed that only Robbie was wearing a watch—nondigital, like his own—and he really wanted to know if her watch would stop.

“I’ll hang back too,” he told the others. “We bagged the judge’s chair, rod, and tackle box, but you can see where he always sits. Couple yards from the water just to the left of that wooden stake there at the edge. It’s where he always ties his catch, and nobody ever moves it. Not even kids trying to be funny.”

“Well, he’s a judge,” Sam murmured. She watched the others move toward the stream, in a line parallel to the stream rather than in a group, and said to Jonah, “What is it you expect them to find?”

“Whatever’s there,” he replied promptly.

Sam sent him a look. “That was a very Bishop-like answer. You two don’t know each other, do you?”

“I’ve only talked to him on the phone,” Jonah replied honestly. He kept his gaze on the agents moving toward the stream. “You said before that you sensed something dark and hungry. You ever sense anything like that before?”

“Not exactly like that.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean . . . evil is always dark in some way. Always . . . hungry, grasping. Once you sense it, touch it . . . it’s familiar. Even if it’s not quite the same as before.”

“So what you sensed back there is evil?”

“Yeah.”

Jonah started to ask her to elaborate, but then the three agents approaching the stream stopped suddenly. Robbie, in the middle, lifted both her hands and slowly moved them as if she felt some kind of barrier. Luke and Dante were both looking at her, and both were wearing frowns.

They were almost exactly six yards away from where the judge always parked his chair.

“Shit,” Jonah breathed.

“Energy bubble?” Sam’s voice was remarkably calm.

“You tell me.”

Still calm, Sam said, “You knew whatever that is had a defined perimeter, didn’t you? How?”

“That,” Jonah said, “depends on whether the watch Robbie is wearing has stopped.”

“Energy affects electronics,” Sam said, more considering than surprised. “Some places hold on to energy. So do some people. We have an agent who blows out every lightbulb in a room if she gets upset and drops her shield.”

Steady himself, Jonah said, “All I know is that watches stop—and cell phones lose time.”

Samantha didn’t even appear startled. “How much time?”

“Far as I can tell, all the time you spend inside that perimeter.”

“There’s one at the site of every disappearance?”

Suddenly struck, he said, “All except the Tyler house. There are several clocks in that kitchen. Oven, microwave, even a plain old wall clock. They looked fine. My watch didn’t stop. And I don’t remember my cell losing time. Why didn’t I notice that?” He pulled his cell phone from the pocket of his Windbreaker and looked at it, compared it to his watch.

Sam waited until he put the phone away again, swearing under his breath, then said, “You didn’t notice because last night a little girl was taken. Kids always hit us the hardest.”

He nodded. “Even those of us who aren’t parents. Yeah, it’s something I’ve noticed before. Though, thankfully, I haven’t had to go through it many times.”

Sam turned her head and looked at him, brows lifting in a silent question.

“No, it wasn’t here. I trained to be a cop in Nashville, and worked there a few years before I came back here. Plus, I’ve taken advantage of things the FBI has offered, from seminars to being temporarily attached to federal task forces around the country.”

“Including child abductions?”

“Yeah. After three different cases, I decided I didn’t want to be a part of those particular task forces again. Though I have taken part in others over the years.” He shrugged. “It’s a small town, and I love it here, but it isn’t—usually—the best place to keep a cop’s instincts sharp.”

Sam nodded. “I get it. And points to you for taking the time and trouble. A lot of small-town police chiefs wouldn’t bother. Not their circus, not their monkeys.”

Jonah smiled faintly but said only, “I want to be a good cop. Besides, I enjoy a challenge. Usually.” He returned his attention to the stream, where Robbie was slowly walking what appeared to be the perimeter of energy—or whatever it was. She didn’t go into the stream, so she walked a half circle on the stream’s wide bank.